


Any Other World

by Seek_The_Mist



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe, Any needed warning will be before the chapter itself, Chapter content and rating will be put in the summary while I update, Ficlet Collection, M/M, Prompt Fill, Pynch Week
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-08 15:09:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11649135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seek_The_Mist/pseuds/Seek_The_Mist
Summary: Merry roundup of all my works for PynchWeek17! High concentration of Alternative Universe fills, because I feel like the world needs more.1."Something old, something new, something borrowed" - AU where Adam acquires Niall’s leather jacket in a charity shop. (T-Rated)2."Superhero AU" - Where Adam saves the day and doesn't lose everything in the process (T-Rated)3."What are you doing here?" - Where Adam comes home early and Ronan is too eager to say hi (E-Rated)4."Fake dating + Dreamscape" - Spy!AU, where Ronan gets dragged into Adam’s mission(E-Rated)5."Fireflies" - Medieval!Fae!AU where a little firefly that Ronan saved as a kid comes back in a weird form (T-Rated)6."Accidental Baby Acquisition" - Flight trip!AU where Ronan's first encounter with Adam features a +1 (T-Rated)





	1. Something old, something new, something borrowed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We start this year's PynchWeek in full "why pick one if you can fill them all?" mood. 
> 
> Special thanks to Interropunct for her flash betaing of this fic (which also ended up being remarkably longer than I expected).
> 
> This is a T-Rated fill and no particular warning apply, just enjoy yourself!

  
  


The cheerful dangling of the bells above the doorframe matches in a weirdly euphonious way with a string of swear words, more convoluted than Adam has ever heard in his life. He lets the door close behind him and mentally prepares to assess the situation critically. 

Two young men stand in front of the cashier counter, and even though Adam knows Blue is on shift today they are both so tall he can't possibly spot her over their shoulders. Adam wouldn't particularly worry about the shortest one — all curly blond hair, fidgety shoulders and a placid aura palpable even without seeing his face — but the one beside him is a different story: dressed completely in black, the guy is built like a brick house, hair buzz-cut and tattooed skin that flexes with nervous tension. 

Not reacting with prejudice and distrust when faced with stereotypically threatening features has been the work of years, for Adam, but in this moment he can't really pin the rising scowl on his face to his idiosyncrasies. Not with a wanna-be biker — if not an actual one — swearing like a sailor towards his best friend.

“Sir, please understand that this is a charity shop, and that I’m not emotionally involved in the situation,” the deeply unimpressed voice of said best friend pipes up. “Quite frankly, I don’t give a damn.”

“Wh...what the fuck?” the wanna-be biker stutters, evidently taken aback by Blue’s unique approach to customer service. Or maybe by the _Gone with the Wind reference_ , it’s difficult to tell.

The blond guy snorts out a laugh and the tension is suddenly broken.

When the wanna-be biker turns to face the other man, his profile is unexpectedly young and full of sharp edges smoothened by some degree of embarrassment. “Don’t laugh, shithead, are you pairing up with the enemy?” 

“Sure, ‘cause I’m the enemy now,” Blue’s epic eyeroll is almost hearable from her words. “Look, I’ve been really trying to help you, I even gave you back most of the stuff back.”

“And you really can do nothing about the fucking leather jacket?” Wanna-be biker asks, tuning down the swearing for a second.

“I told you, it has been sold already,” Blue sighs deeply.

Adam looks down at himself and at the new-old jacket that Blue had convinced him to buy just yesterday. It’s a sturdy item of well-worn black leather, remarkably preserved for something you can find in a charity shop; it must have cost half a fortune, back in the day, because even now falls elegant — if not a bit too large — around Adam’s shoulders.  
Suddenly, he is stuck with the possibility that it is _still_ worth a small fortune, in the vintage market, and maybe that’s the reason the wanna-be biker wants it back after having made an ill-advised donation.

“Ronan, I’m sorry, if I hadn’t mixed up the boxes…” the blond guy pipes up, apologetical and distraught in a way that halts Adam’s train of thought in its tracks. 

The wanna-be biker — Ronan — sighs and shakes his head, “It’s fucking fine, Matthew, I should have left you better labels.” For all his general rudeness, there is a carefulness in his tone that captivates Adam’s attention more than any random eavesdropped conversation should.

He abandons his spot by the door, where all the commotion had made him invisible, and takes a couple of steps forward. “Are we talking about this jacket?”

Both Ronan and Matthew turn on their heel, in complete synch, and whatever moment Ronan had been having gets swallowed by an unapproachable frown. He squares Adam up and down, plush mouth thinning while taking in the jacket. “Yes, exactly that one.”

“Adam!” Blue calls, finally appearing at the counter now that the two guys moved out of the way. She’s dressed with an oversized t-shirt that evidently used to be two different pieces of clothing sewn together and her hair are a madness of fluorescent clips. “I wasn’t expecting you to be back so soon!”

“Well, apparently I came just in time for a jacket crisis,” Adam tries to joke, making his way towards the cashier position.

He gets intercepted by Ronan charging imperiously towards him, wallet flashing in his hands. If he had been tall to see from the other side of the shop, Ronan is even more imposing at this distance, with sharp blue eyes and an impossible jawline highlighted by an obvious gnashing of teeth. There is no way he’s more than a couple of years older than Adam, if any, but the way he flashes his wallet open is reminiscent of many things, but not of a peer.

“I’m gonna need that back,” Ronan states, aggressively. There are more notes than what would be immediately countable, in his wallet, and several shiny credit cards. “So how much do you want? Let’s get this fuckery over with.”

Whatever sympathy Adam had felt from the interaction with Matthew disperses faster than the helium from a popped balloon. He gives Ronan a glacial once-over. “Who says I’m gonna give it back?”

Unabashed anger builds up on Ronan’s face like a wave. “Are you fucking kiddin— “

“Sorry! Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Matthew interjects, talking over Ronan and almost pushing him out of the way with a vicious elbow in the ribs. It’s a net contrast with his innocent doe eyes and the angelic curls, whose effect is not completely neutralized regardless. “Ronan didn’t mean to be rude — even though he is. It’s my fault, I gave away the wrong box and now you’ve got our father’s jacket…”

“Matthew, that’s none of his business!” Ronan snarls, but none of the violence his posture oozes is directed towards him.

“Well, if we want the jacket back maybe he wants to know way, no?” Matthew replies, between air-headed oversharing and candid logic. 

Witnessing the scene, Adam is stuck with the sudden realization that they are brothers, even though they look as different as day and night. He shouldn’t like other people’s stories and random displays of personality traits as much as he does, but it still serve to quench some of his annoyance over the money business. 

“Still don’t want your money,” Adam stresses, the words more familiar in his mouth than he would like them to be. He crosses his arms, and he can see both brothers eyes tracking the movement of his hands over the old — familiar — leather. “This is a charity shop, you know? Taking back your stuff is already a mess.”

Blue, some feet away, does nothing to defuse Adam’s statement and even nods emphatically at the concept. 

Ronan’s expression gets even darker and Adam’s blood soars in his vein, with something more complicated than the adrenaline before a fight. This guy really irks him in all the possible ways. 

“So what the hell do you want? Because I still want the fucking jacket back,” Ronan counters, piercing two holes through Adam with his eyes. When Adam doesn’t cower and just stares back, unblinking, the line of Ronan’s plush lips gets even tighter. 

“Then…” Adam starts, the tension between them almost palpable like pinpricks on his skin, making him reckless, “...there might be something you can make yourself _fucking_ useful with.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


Collaborating to an experimental research on neurology and cognitive resilience isn’t a regretful experience, academically speaking, but it has proven more frustrating than Adam would have thought when he joined it. The participants is on voluntary basis and there is no compensation for the time spent on their tasks and tests, so it would be unfair to resent undergraduates already burdened with jobs for bailing out. It is less unfair to resent the other type of undergraduates — the one that are evidently well-off and for whom the burden of student debt doesn’t exist at all — for looking Adam and the study outline with obvious disregard before binning it. Considering the effort that he put in this whole ordeal, spending weeks trying to find the last person necessary to have a statistically relevant pool has been the proverbial cherry on top. 

All things considered, no one should really blame him for bending the ethics a bit and “gently coaxing” Ronan — Ronan Niall Lynch, 24, born in Henrietta, resident in Henrietta — to take part. Having the leather jacket back was more than everyone else was getting, after all.

At the beginning, Ronan sits in sulking silence performing tasks on a tablet with the programs set up for the research. They rarely speak, as Ronan is still somehow convinced he’s being psychoanalysed even though they are meeting in a quiet coffee shop that doesn’t resemble an office at all. Adam drinks enough coffee for the both of them, Ronan sticks to sparkling water.

“I sleep like shit,” Ronan admits, some days in, “I can’t drink coffee.”

“Why not try some not caffeinated tea, then?” Adam suggests, looking up from some of the reports he’s correcting as a TA.

Ronan makes a weird face that it’s not exactly disgust. “I asked, but they only have peppermint.”

Adam can’t refrain from storting. “Why are you so outraged by peppermint?”

“Jesus Christ,” Ronan passes a hand on his buzzed-cut scalp and looks away from Adam. “You would be as well if you knew someone that is constantly munching on it. And I do, okay?”

That’s how Adam learned about Richard “Dick” Gansey, that at some indefinite point in their lives must have been a roommate for the unapproachable guy that Ronan is. Somehow, that opens more tentative — sometimes half-baked — conversations, that leave Adam wondering if Gansey is more Ronan’s teenage crush or his found brother. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


By the end of the week, Ronan had completed all the task with their developed app. He insisted that he would be shit in all of them and screw up Adam’s dataset, but, alone in his house at night and tabulating his results, Adam found himself staring at some weirdly creative, surprisingly emotional responses to seemly inane tasks. 

The upside is of course that in the meantime he managed to convince Ronan that _no, he’s not a shrink, as I’ve been telling you for the beginning_. At last, they manage to start the questionnaires. It’s from those that Adam learns that Ronan left school before graduating high-school, because Matthew’s memory problems can be a bit more serious than just mixing up a box and the third Lynch brother — Declan, more commonly known as “that asshole” — was already doing to well in university to make it worth leaving.

“I’ve always been shit as school, after all, I was already more out than in,” Ronan says, the word _school_ pronounced with such obvious disregard it sounds like it personally offends him. 

At that point, Adam feels weirdly compelled to tell him that he can’t really sympathize, considering how much school saved his life — between free meals, properly heated rooms, time away from home, scholarships, a way out. Ronan looks at him intently, as if hearing more than Adam is actually saying, and Adam’s skin prickles, again. 

There were no Mr and Mrs Lynch, their only obvious leftover the impressive amount of money that always fill Ronan’s wallet. Adam feels a pang of guilt in his chest about how easily he keeps holding the leather jacket at stake for this whole ordeal. 

A better man would call it quits now and give the memorabilia back. Adam, that always tries to be the best version of _himself_ and never latched on stereotypical traits to follow, does not. Whatever Ronan was expecting from him, it might not be this; weirdly, he seems to prefer it. 

“Do you speak any other languages?” Adam asks, going through the second folder of questions at the end of the second week.

“Does latin count?”

Adam raises his eyes with a pointed expression, “What did I say about bullshitting the answers to this stuff?”

“I’m not bullshitting, I’m serious! Does it count?” Ronan insists, too earnest for the prank of a moment. He doesn’t, Adam found, tend to lie.

“Are you seriously telling me you’re fluent in latin?” Adam looks at him, still not writing anything down. 

Ronan shrugs, in all his bulky threatening wanna-be biker glory. “ _Fronti nulla fides_?”

Adam, with his years as a scholarship student, can’t help but laugh at hearing Juvenal quoted in a pondering, conversational tone. Ronan, for the first time in two weeks, smiles broadly and without sharp edges. It’s weirdly difficult to look at him like this, so Adam just writes the answer down.

  
  


* * *

  
  


On Monday, inexplicably, Ronan decides to pick Adam up from the campus, since he was apparently on his way over before their coffee shop meeting. Apparently, he is not a biker, not even a wanna-be one, and actively distrusts motorcycles with all his heart. The irony is not lost to Adam, especially in the moment Ronan starts driving and he looked every inch a racer.

“I kind of used to do that, in high school, you know,” Ronan says, nonchalant, and Adam finds himself losing it again.

While looking around the BMW — honestly impressive, well-kept but with a general clutter that Adam intimately defines _very Ronan_ before quickly shutting that same thought off — Adam spots a pack of beef strips, a happy dog lolling his tongue on the package. 

“Honestly, you don’t look like a dog person,” he considers, looking up at Ronan.

“What the fuck are you talking about now, Parrish?” Ronan clips out, rude as usual but not really aggressive. He follows Adam’s gaze down towards the small pockets close to the stick, and snorts. “That’s not for a dog. That’s for my raven.”

“Your what, now?”

“A raven, Parrish. Black, sleek, they stare a whole fucking lot and they caw?”

“I know what a raven is, Lynch, but are you telling me you’ve got one?” Disbelief paints every one of Adam’s words once again.

“Her name is Chainsaw,” Ronan replies, matter-of-factly. It’s such a _Ronan thing_ , once again, that Adam can only laugh, chin tilting upwards. He can feel Ronan’s eyes following him, even though he’s supposed to look at the road. “I don’t have pictures, ask Matthew. And don’t try to pretend you don’t have his number, I know he gives it to basically _everyone_.”

Adam snickers, head turning against the headrest. He catches Ronan’s eyes and, uncharacteristically, Ronan holds his gaze, with a little lopsided smile, until the traffic light flashes green again.

  
  


* * *

  
  


“You want to be a _farmer_?”

“Shut the fuck up, Parrish! The Barns — the family house, I mean — it’s basically a farm already!”

“Do you even know what farming entails?”

“I grew up surrounded by cows, for fuck’s sake, drop the distrusting tone.”

“Surrounded by — Jesus. You’re unbelievable, Lynch.”

“Yeah, you’re an asshole as well, Parrish.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


It takes them a whole month, at the end, to go through Adam’s folder of questionnaires, mostly because Adam catches himself slowing down on the pace, chatting about unrelated stuff anytime Ronan feels like talking and letting himself be dragged into other activities when Ronan just feels like _showing_ him something.

On the very last day, he closes his folder with a definitive sigh, just as the coffee shop is starting to close. 

“Okay, this is it. Thank you for your time, Lynch, I hope I wasn’t too similar to a shrink,” Adam says, looking at the cars passing by and without looking at Ronan, who stands in front of him on the pavement outside the shop. In the corner of his eyes, he can see Ronan fidgeting with the leather bands on his wrist, probably fighting hard not to bring them to his mouth. When no answer comes, he sighs again, and starts to take the leather jacket off.

He doesn’t know why he put him on in the first place, while going out. It’s stupid, and impractical, and he just ends up fighting with his backpack full of notes to free his shoulders. 

Ronan’s hands enter his personal space suddenly, grasping at the two sides of the open jacket. He is impossibly close to Adam, like this, looming from almost five inches above. In the artificial lights and shadows cast by the streetlights, the look in his eyes is weirder than Adam dares to address.

“Jesus, Lynch,” he murmurs, trying for levity. “Give me a second, I’m giving it back. A deal is a deal.”

The grip on the leather intensifies, Adam can feel the pull from under his armpits. 

“You could borrow it,” Ronan clips out, through gritted teeth. It’s difficult not to look at him, now. 

“I could what?” Adam murmurs, the back of his mind whispering treacherous ideas for this moment, even while his rationality refuses to jump to conclusions.

“Borrow it. We keep meeting, you keep the jacket.” Trust Ronan to be able to be aggressive regardless of the content of his words.

“You want to keep meeting,” Adam repeats, lacking eloquence and feeling strange in his stomach. He wants to raise his hands, maybe meet Ronan halfway, but somehow he can’t. 

“Are you having a doctor-patient good-fucking-practice breach, Parrish?” 

Ronan’s tone sounds like he’s steeling himself for rejection and the grip of his hands is loosening, slowly. Abruptly, Adam finds that he can’t stand it. He takes half a step forwards, right into Ronan’s arms. For all the rigorous logic Adam has built the foundations of his life on, he can’t talk it over, now, he can’t calm the queasiness in his stomach. He can just lean forward, and kiss Ronan. 

It’s nothing like what he expected and everything like what he should have guessed at the same time. 

Ronan jumps under the contact and doesn’t avoid it even though he must have seen it coming. His lips stay uncertain for a second and then he exhale softly, tilting his head to the side to make the kiss more solid, still testing the waters. It’s as careful as every sideways glance he has ever reserved to Adam, and Adam himself can’t stand it. 

He opens his mouth and licks over Ronan’s lips — because he has to, because he watched them in all their tilts and quirks and still doesn’t know what they taste like. 

Ronan’s breath jumps again, but he opens his mouth nonetheless, dragging Adam close by the jacket again. Whatever nervousness Adam was still harbouring dissolves in a weird spark of lights under his closed eyelids while the kiss turns wet, _deep_. Where Adam is methodic, exploring, Ronan is a wild aimless chase for an undefined something. The net result is weirdly matched kiss that clicks perfectly with that unplaceable itch that Ronan provokes with his sole existent. It feels better than any first kiss between two almost-strangers has the right to be.

An ambulance passes by, loud, obnoxious and everything they need to remember where they are.

Adam leans back, but the world is weirdly hyperfocused on Ronan’s face nonetheless, when he opens his eyes. Ronan smiles and bends down after him, pressing their forehead together. It’s an unseemingly soft smile, and Adam is stuck with the realization of how many private Ronan Lynch’s expression he can’t even _imagine_ yet. 

He catches himself smiling back, while saying the only thing he could possibly say, now. 

“Yeah...Yeah, I’ll borrow it.”

  
  


  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much for reading!
> 
> I started writing for this fandom (and in general in english) with Pynchweek16 so participating to the 2017 edition is a sort-of-emotional experience. Kudos, comments, and general thumbs up are especially appreciated because of this <3
> 
> I'm also posting on [my Tumblr](http://seekthemist.tumblr.com), the ask box is always open, just drop by :D


	2. Superhero AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Superhero AU as second installment of the Pynchweek!
> 
> Also, I’m a Very Dramatic Writer and I will prove myself as such all over again even within one shot ficlet, or so help me God. Unfortunately I'm unbetaed on this run, please be patient with typos and the like.
> 
> Goes without saying that Adam is a bit of an overdramatic brooding superhero (surprising virtually no one), so even though this is a T-rated fill beware some existential angst.

  
  


Sometimes, in the hecticness that characterizes Adam’s days, he would really like to tell himself that _he didn’t asked for any of this_. Instead, he knows he kind of did, he let himself go through the rabbit holes of fever dreams, he listened to an omnipotent forest over and over again. 

Cabeswater asked, at the end, “What role do you want in all this, child, now that you know?”

Adam only had one answer, “I will be your hands, I will be your eyes.”

And thus it all began.

  
  


* * *

  
  


It would be so much easier if Adam could be _college student by day, superhero by night_ , but as a general rule of thumb Adam’s life is never easy, and the Greenmantels are not nocturnal enough for their plans to be disrupted only after dark. As a result, Adam routinely juggles two jobs, college work, some highly magical shenanigans and tries to get some sleep when he can.

And, more importantly, he tries to leave his group of friend and his boyfriend happily oblivious of everything, because he trusts them _with his life_ and needs to keep them _safe_ at the same time. 

Every step he took, he chose it. He keeps choosing it every day. They didn’t, so it’s not their burden to take. 

Sometimes, though, Adam wishes it were easier, with everything out in the open. It would be possible, then, to admit that Cabeswater is overwhelming, that having a sixth sense without always being able to interpret it is confusing. That he doesn’t know what he’s doing. That he’s tired, so _tired_. 

His friends just thinks he’s overworked, and in some sense he is, but nothing of what they tried would really help. Still, it’s endearing when Gansey always makes sure he has all the right books around to study on, when Blue constantly comes over with leftovers, when Henry provides a virtually unlimited supply of coffee exactly when Adam feels he really needs it. Ronan, inexplicably, always manages to be there exactly when Adam needs him, when the ice he’s walking on is at its thinnest, and never really makes him feel like he’s losing it.

He’s lucky, to have so many anchors. Adam says it to himself over and over again, soaking in the comfort Ronan’s fingers caressing along his naked back in a late spring night. Sleep is proving difficult to catch, in a background rustling of countless leaves that are not really in the room with them, and Ronan’s chest raises and fall rhythmically in his sleep. 

Adam doesn't know how he’s managing to cuddle him and sleep at the same time, but his bones still ache from the crazy chase for displaces magical artifacts and four double shifts during the weeks, so he just wants more. He shuffle even closer, hooking one leg around Ronan’s and hiding his face in the familiar crook of his neck.

Ronan turns his head in his sleep and kisses an indefinite point on Adam’s hair before stilling again. Heat spreads through Adam’s nerves like a wave, and if he weren’t so damn _drained_ he would maybe wake Ronan up, get himself a proper kiss, maybe even another round of sex. 

His own limbs flip him off at the sheer thought of moving, though, so he stays put and lets himself slumber. It’s easier, with Ronan’s mindless touches anchoring Adam in this place, in this moment. 

Cabeswater is already tended for, after all. Adam can sleep, and be rested for tomorrow. He will have his first day off in months and go with Ronan to see the old train station, open only for a day before they start the renewals. 

It will be all right.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Except that it wasn’t.

If the ground weren’t shaking under his feet, the ceiling crumbling above his head while he tries to find cover with Ronan under an old ticket counter, Adam would scream in frustration.

He tried so hard to have everything in order for today, so hard that he managed to ignore whatever fuss Cabeswater has been having, so hard that he had been having unadulterated fun, for once. 

So of course hell is raining down. He only has himself to blame.

“What the fuck is going on?!” Ronan’s voice itches in lungs. Adam has never felt him so panicked.

“The building is falling. The exit is blocked.” Adam doesn't like his own voice, detached and overly-clinical.

Cabeswater murmurs of current criticalities and damage control. The building will fall within ten minutes. The artifact that is wreaking havoc on the fundations is planted within one of the water mains with one of the Greenmantles devices — so much for thinking that he has neutralised them all.

Adam needs to do what he must. Even though Ronan is looking at him like he doesn’t know him, even though Adam might make him realize that he really doesn’t, even though this might be the end of his life like he knows it. He just does. So he gets up.

“Adam what the fuck are you doing?! Stay down!” Ronan scrambles to grab him, hands trembling. 

Adam twines their fingers together. Just a bit, just two seconds, if this is the last time. 

“You know it has been happening a lot, recently, right? And you know how it usually stops, don’t you?” He murmurs, barely audible above the rumbling of the constant, supernaturally localised earthquake that is shaking the world under their feet. 

“I don’t see the fucking Magician here, though. Stay down, for fuck’s sake! Down!” Ronan is chalk white with terror, and still manages to munch through words just to try and get Adam to safety. 

He cares, and Adam doesn’t know why it’s always so surprising. Maybe it’s just because he doesn’t deserve it. 

Adam yanks his hands out of Ronan’s grip. “I’ll fix it. You’ll go back to your brothers, and the others, and Chainsaw. It’ll be okay.”

“Adam, please, what the fuck—”

“Ronan,” Adam murmurs, getting up. His eyes are burning, but maybe it’s just because Cabeswater is surging through his veins, making his fingers tingle with power. He strokes with one finger along Ronan’s cheek and retracts when his hands starts to cover in thorns. “I’m the Magician.”

He takes several steps away while Ronan looks at him, breathless and wordless. 

“I’m so sorry,” Adam smiles, self-deprecating, and has the distinct sensation that the curve of his face is as disembodied as every other part of him, when it’s like this. 

He spreads his arms. Vines jumps through the floor, along the walls, all the way up to the ceilings, his to use and his to command. Every colour is replaced by some shade of green in his eyes. 

Somewhere in an impossible, echoing distance, Ronan screams. 

 

  
  


* * *

  
  


“Adam! Adam, come on…”

Adam open his eyes and the sky is blue above him, between the towering heights of two buildings, too close together. Ronan is looking at him and the pavement of the alley is coarse under his back. 

Honestly, he must be hallucinating.

“Mary Mother of Jesus, shit...can you see me? Can you hear me?” Ronan’s voice is earnest and conceited, too many question as once. Adam would call it a Gansey moment, in another situation. 

“Yes,” he croaks out, voice broken. “I’m...where are we?” He’s confused. It’s never a good sign when he’s confused.

“Fuck. Oh my God,” Ronan combs his hair backwards. This can’t be true, this must be a trick of his mind in a terrible state. No one would touch him after seeing what full access to Cabeswater’s power do to him, how he’s barely even _human_ anymore. “Away from there. You...I don’t know, you crushed this weird shiny stone and the building stopped shaking, but you went down like a brick. I had to bring you out.”

Ambulance and police sirens scream in the distance. Adam confusedly turns his head to follow them. Maybe they are not safe, here. Real or not, damage control is always his top priority, apparently.

“Quit it, for fuck’s sake, look at me,” Ronan sounds remarkably like Ronan, turning Adam’s head back to watch him. “Are you okay? Come on, Adam, talk to me.”

“I...I think I’m okay.” The struggle to avoid Ronan’s eyes is so real and urgent that Adam even forces himself to sit up. The ground sways underneath him. “I’m sorry you had to see this.”

“You’re _what_?” Ronan snarls, rightfully angry and somehow still touching him, holding Adam by his shoulders when he sways. “Adam, I swear to God the _moment_ you don’t look like you’re about to pass out I’m gonna kick your ass _so hard_ …”

“I’m sorry,” Adam murmurs, miserably and yet confused. By the wording, by the sentiment, by the general way this scene is playing out. It doesn’t sound or look like he imagined _Ronan after finding out_.

“You didn’t tell me anything!”

“I’m sorry.”

“Fuck sorry!” Ronan roars, and then tries to tune it down, possibly for the sake of not being heard. “You could have died, today! You could have died so many times! And you didn’t tell me anything!”

Adam finds himself looking up, looking at Ronan and his strange, unpredicted worries. It’s impossible not to sense the _I’ve would have helped you_ that sits between the lines, but it’s disconcerting for Adam to realize that it’s true — that Ronan would have been there like he is now, that Ronan would have helped. 

If his head weren’t pounding so badly maybe he would be able to say that he doesn’t need help, but at the moment he doesn’t have the strength. Not even to be self-denying, and that’s saying a lot. 

“I didn’t want you to leave me,” Adam admits, shocking even himself one he hears his own voice. 

“Fuck all the way off!” Ronan snaps, and yet hugs him tightly. “I’m not leaving you. I’m gonna fucking kill you, but I’m not leaving you.”

The lump in his throat expands so quickly that Adam can’t talk, tears swimming in his already burning eyes. He hides his head on Ronan’s shoulder. Ronan, impossibly, lets him.

“We’re going home, now. So you can rest. And tell me everything, shit, like, really everything.” 

Cabeswater has the audacity to bubble happily among his shattered thoughts.

Adam close his eyes, and nods.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much for reading!
> 
> It wouldn't be a Pynchweek if I didn't end up publishing at unholy hours in the night (in my timezone), wouldn't it?
> 
> I'm also posting on [my Tumblr](http://seekthemist.tumblr.com), the ask box is always open, just drop by :D Comments, kudos and nice thoughts are, as always, very much appreciated. I love you all VERY much!


	3. "What are you doing here?"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Pynchweek Day3, I uphold the tradition started last year with [A Different Kind of First](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7768807) and I write a smutty ficlet inspired by Picapicae's EXCELLENT art. In particular, [this amazing piece over here](http://picabutts.tumblr.com/image/160157382984) (please mind it, it's NSFW)
> 
> Sae, I love you to pieces and I hope you enjoy this (even though it's really unbetaed and I'm a bit sleep deprived XD)
> 
> This is an E-rated fill that contains: Semi-public Sex, General Inappropriate Behaviour, Blow Jobs. If this is up your alley, go and enjoy! :D  
>   
>   
> 

  
  


Adam arrives at St. Agnes church exactly at 12.40 am on Sunday morning, knowing with a sort of wicked satisfaction that Father Lucas will always intone the closing chants of the mass between 12.54 and 12.57 am, like clockworks. After months living above that same church, he does feel statistically competent about the practice even without ever attending the services. 

He stands silently close to the side door, looking inside the church instead of taking what used to be the usual route, up the stairs and to the tiny cramped room. Barely one year has passed but Adam feels different already — lungs breathing more freely, dirt and scabs scrubbed off to reveal new skin. Older. Wiser. It’s all he has ever hoped for, but he would never have guessed that he would feel excitement in his stomach about coming back. 

In the dim light of the aisle, broken only by patches of coloured lights filtering from glazed windows, Ronan moves smoothly from sitting to kneeling on the pew. Matthew and Declan beside him are just as impeccably dressed, decently behaved like the good catholic brothers they are supposed to be. 

Leaning with one shoulder on the doorframe, Adam contents himself with watching Ronan’s elegant profile, the broadness of his shoulders under impeccable seams, how straight and well ironed his white collar is and how illicit the final tendrils of his tattoo look while peeking out from the fabric. He’s unfairly beautiful and deliciously oblivious of Adam’s presence — not just in the church but in Henrietta in general. 

Adam was due to arrive in 48 hours, before his TA rescheduled a final exercises class to yesterday afternoon instead of Monday. Yet, Adam had said nothing, feeling mischievous, and jumped in the car first thing this morning after packing for the full spring-break. 

The more the minutes tick by, the less he can wait to see Ronan’s face. He has seen the routine, he has seen the anticipation, but he has never seen this brand of surprise and he wants it. 

The mass ends in a choir of _amen_ and all the attendants slowly start to get up. Adam slides away from the cone of shadows cast by the door, making himself visible from the nave. 

He can pinpoint the exact moment Ronan spots him because he stops in his aimless track — not willing to follow Declan in his pleasantries with the big local names nor Matthew in his social chatter with everyone in his path — and the focus of his expression sparks and shifts. Adam has barely the time to smirk before Ronan propels forward, zigzagging through the pews and reaching him in the abandoned spot by the service side door. 

In the several scenarios Adam’s mind entertained him with during the several hours drive, the sudden silence that follows is not really contemplated. Still, Ronan stares and stares, pervaded by a weird tension that seems to say _am I awake? Is this a trick?_ , and only after some seconds he reaches and touches his hand, palm sliding over his knuckles.

“Adam,” Ronan murmurs, at the end, with a convoluted sort of wonder. This is exactly why Adam had to do this. To see this, Ronan out of the blue. 

“Hi, I’m back.”

Ronan gurgles out a weird throaty sound and hovers with his free hand on Adam’s other side, as if weirdly constrained in both words and actions by the church boundaries. At the end, he resolves just as abruptly to grab Adam by the wrist and drag him outside, closing the side door behind them and rushing towards a very blind spot between bushes and old tombs. 

Cornered against a wall, Adam laughs with mirth and raises his right hand to circle Ronan’s waist below the jacket.

“Hi, Ronan,” he reiterates, “I’m back.”

Ronan hugs him for good, then, a fierce grip around his back that contrast a bit with the overwhelmed drag of his nose on the side of Adam’s face. “What the fuck are you doing here? Today? What about that shitty class?”

“Rescheduled, came back early,” Adam says, turning his head to catch Ronan’s lips in the path. 

“Fuck…” Ronan murmurs, appreciatively, eyes fluttering close. 

They kiss once, like a _hi_. A second time, like a _surprise, I’m here_. Then Ronan pushes him bodily against the wall and bends down completely to suck Adam’s tongue into his mouth and hands roaming over his travel clothes, and there is no word to associate to it, just _need_. 

Ronan jerks him even closer, possessive hand all over his waist. Adam claws at his shirt in the effort to stay exactly there, licking along the roof of Ronan’s mouth and rocking against him, slowly, when he find Ronan’s thigh _just there_ to lock them in position. 

“You can’t...make me hard outside a church…” Adam murmurs, still half-engrossed in the kiss even with very few oxygen left in his lungs.

“Bit late, you already are,” Ronan’s eyes glitter, dragging his leg more purposely between Adam’s and feeling the bulge below his cotton trousers. Then, with the same crazy rush that made Adam land on the wall, Ronan lets his grip go and falls to his knees.

“You can’t seriously…” Adam stutters, even while blood rushes very pointedly away from his brain and towards more pragmatic destinations. He looks around, but there is only silence in the early afternoon in the backyard, not even voices of other people from the side, as if everyone is still inside talking.

“Am already,” Ronan groans, in an unfailing display of Ronan logic. 

While he undoes Adam’s buttons and noses eagerly at his boxers, Adam finds himself dumbfounded, leaning heavily against the wall and guilty of accommodating Ronan between his spread legs. He must have missed something fundamental in his possible prediction of how surprising Ronan was likely to end. 

It would be to hypocritical to say that he’s dissatisfied with the events. Not when Ronan free his erection from, wrapping one hand around it to steady it, and Adam twitches out of his skin already — shamefully hard, not having felt Ronan’s touch in _months_. 

Ronan, still all dressed up with a perfect jacket and a neatly done tie, drops his mouth open and licks all the way up from the base, a low sound of satisfaction escaping from his throat. He straighten his back and Adam can see how _wet_ his tongue looks in the natural light when he swirls around the tip, _over_ it, and then bends Adam’s dick down to lick further on the other side.

“Shi...t…” Adam swears, bearing down on Ronan’s shoulders in a full-body twitch.

A strong hand steadies him at the side of the hip and Ronan hums again, keeping his tongue pressed on the side of Adam’s dick before letting it slide in the liquid heat of his mouth. Adam can see his long eyelashes flutter, the vague flushing along his high cheekbones, the dark elegance of his strong body both alien and familiar in this overly civilized clothing. He moans breathlessly, looking down at Ronan like the work of art and indecent worshipping he is.

Ronan bobs his head experimentally, or maybe savouring this obscenity as the unique moment it is, and only curls his fingers in pleasure — both on Adam’s hipbones and around Adam’s cock — when Adam digs down on his shoulder. 

“Ronan, god…”

Tensed around his dick, Ronan’s plush lips tilt in a suggestion of a smile.

Adam snaps all the way off and grasp the side of Ronan’s head tightly, from his jaw to the back of his head. Ronan, remarkably, stills right away, and even opens his eyes to look up at Adam. 

They are blue, and dark, and liquid, and Adam never wants them to stop watching him like he holds meaning and wonder, even for the impossible, unpinnable creature that Ronan is.

“So you want this, uh?” Adam pants, caressing with the curve of Ronan’s jaw bone with the tip of his thumb.

“U-uh…” 

It sounds like an agreeable moan all around his cock, and Adam is already seeing stars, drunk on withdrawal from _exactly this_. 

“Then let me give it to you.”

Adam forces his grip tighter and reaches with his free hand to twine their fingers together, effectively getting rid of the pressure plastering his hips on the wall. Then he cants up, pushing his dick directly into Ronan’s mouth, and everything is velvety and hot. 

Ronan has his eyes closed again, but his mouth is wide open, tongue furling around Adam’s erection. He welcomes him deeper and deeper, at every thrust, and Adam’s breath his frantic but he moves slowly, between carefulness and neediness.

He wants to enjoy it. He wants Ronan to enjoy it. 

And judging by the tiny hitched moans that reverberate around his erection and Ronan’s short nails dragging between his knuckles, Ronan absolutely is. 

Adam wants this to last forever, but Ronan knows _exactly_ how to suck him and he’s devoting himself to the task in a way that should be illegal. He gives in to the shivering, toes curling in his trainers, and pushes deeply, more fully. To feel the flutter of Ronan’s tongue, to feel him choke, just a bit, and still suck Adam with single-minded intent. 

“Yeah...fuck yes…” Adam whispers, looking down at Ronan in all his polished glory that just abandons his head in Adam’s grip for him to fuck his mouth.

“Ah...nh...han…”

It’s the subtle sounds that kill him: the rhythmic, helpless, sounds with which Ronan seems to share his pleasure. 

Adam snaps in two and just comes all the way down Ronan’s throat, clawing on the soft skin of his neck where he’s still holding him. Ronan sucks and swallow him, again and again, until Adam’s own knees give out and he slides with his ass on the grass.

“Jesus Christ, Ronan…” He moans in a broken whispers, dragging Ronan up to kiss himself away from his lips.

Tires scratches on the gravel and a very neat voice calls over from an indefinite distance, getting closer.

“Ronan?”

They both startles and Ronan looks at Adam with impossibly wide, vaguely hazy eyes.

“Fuck...I forgot about Declan…” His voice his raspy and his lips are obscenely red. His clothes are still mostly spotless — apart from possible grass stains in line with the knees — but the skin from his neck upwards is blotched with excitement and from Adam’s nails. The only way he would look less up to no good would be if he hadn’t swallow Adam’s come all the way down, but it’s a really close call.

“Shit.” Adam tucks himself back in with that reflexive guilt that every teenager knows how to feel when caught doing exactly this type of messing around. “He’s not gonna be happy, is he?”

Ronan opens in a smile that speaks self-satisfied asshole from miles away. He kisses Adam again and then goes to get up, unsteady on his legs and already savouring the conflict.

“Oh, no, absolutely not.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much for reading!
> 
> Your kudos, comments, and appreciation is what keeps me going even though I constantly end up sleep deprived during Pynchweek!
> 
> I'm also posting on [my Tumblr](http://seekthemist.tumblr.com), the ask box is always open, feel free to drop by! :D


	4. Fake Dating + Dreamscape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so, I merged two days but the result is a crazy fic of almost 5k so I hope I can be forgiven!
> 
> Betaed by Interropunct that is, as usual, made of the stuff of awesomeness! And I should also mention Sabeth for her constant support :D
> 
> Now buckle up for: Spy!AU, because we like fake dating and we like it even more in weird shapes and forms.
> 
>  
> 
> **Please beware that this fic is E-rated and it will contain explicit (a bit rough) sex between almost strangers, but apart from that no specific warnings apply!**

  
  


The man approaches him smoothly, smartly dressed in a long coat open to reveal trousers, shirt and pullover. He’s pleasant to the eye in the neatest way — sleek black hair, glasses, dark eyes behind them — and a cheerful enough look to give away easygoing vibes. Basically, he is everything Ronan has never been and purposefully avoids being even in a hall of a too-fancy hotel while waiting to check-in to a Declan-provided room. 

The reply to Ronan’s lifted eyebrow — infamous for sending tougher man to scatter — is a broad smile, while the man leans close to Ronan in a disturbingly familiar way, his very stance oozing intimacy. Ronan is _this_ close to tell him to fuck all the way off, but the man speaks first.

“Ronan Lynch, I need to request your cooperation.” The approachable facade doesn’t waver at all, but the voice is calm and collected and perfectly pitched to dissolve in the busy humming of the hotel foyer. 

He shuffles around, almost distractedly, slipping a passport and what looks like a booking reservation print-out to Ronan. Taken aback from being called by name by a perfect stranger and caught in the loop of efficient movements, Ronan takes everything. That’s the moment he notices something between passport and papers: a CIA badge.

“Don’t take it out, just watch, it’s authentic,” the man instructs, leaning close to his shoulder as his they are discussing something together. 

The badge is admittedly too shiny in the bright lights of the hall to be a copy; a holographic stamp is just beside the picture inside, that even at a quick glance matches the features of the man beside him. 

_Adam Parrish, Special Agent._

The passport, maybe unsurprisingly, is for a completely different name.

Ronan can feel his eyes widening, glancing more nervously back, but the man — Adam — goes on unperturbed.

“We’re gonna check into your room. Together. I’m your date for the night. I’ll explain later.” A hand runs down Ronan’s arm, affectionate as every other movement and expression Adam had reserved him. When he gets to Ronan’s wrist, though, the badge flashes out of view in one smooth second, recovered by his owner. “Well?” He prompts again, when Ronan stays silent.

“O...okay, fuck, I don’t know, okay,” he murmurs, feeling completely out of place and conflicting.

“Perfect!” Adam chirps, loudly, made for anyone to see. It would be admittedly a good conclusion for a dialogue between lovebirds.

The old lady currently being served picks up her keys and leaves the spot at the shiny marble counter. Adam just latches one arm around Ronan’s elbow, and propels them forward, their luggage following.

Ronan blinks, trying to get a grip on the situation and mostly failing. The clerk at the reception politely greets him with a spiel as polished as the hotel itself and smiles broadly even while Ronan stutters. Adam squeezes his arm, very discretely but very effectively. 

“Er...yes...I’m here to check in...to check _us_ in. I have a room reserved. The name is Ronan Lynch.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


Once the door of room 832 closes behind them, Ronan’s brain has caught up enough for him to have actual questions, several of them. He’s just charging up for the second big _okay what the actual fuck_ of the evening, when Adam lifts one hand in a gesture so commanding that Ronan catches himself stopping in his track. 

Pressing the index finger between his mouth and nose — in the universal gesture for silence — Adam leaves his trolley at the entrance, picks up a little black box that looks a bit like a remote control, and strolls further into the room with the sinuosity of a cat. 

Ronan instinctively finds his movements and his jutting thumbs _very distracting_ and chastises himself just as quickly for the thought. 

The room is wide and comfortable, spotlessly prepared for affluent guests and with curtains open to a stunning view of the city just after dark. Adam roams it efficiently, the electromagnetic detector flashing along every sensible place and some fairly obscure ones. At the end, he stops by the windows and closes the drapes in a very definitive gestures. 

“The room is clean, B., I’ll update you in 30.” Adam hums, and then turns to face Ronan, still standing at the entrance. It’s pretty clear that he wasn’t talking to anyone in the room, and even Ronan has seen enough movie to know what remote communication looks like. 

“Okay are you done with this shit? Because I really want to know what the fuck is going on here,” Ronan snaps out. Adam is serenely unperturbed by any display of aggression, and Ronan has many, especially when — he must admit, to himself at least — he’s feeling fairly intimidated by the whole context.

“Have a seat, Mr. Lynch, let me explain,” he answers, gesturing vaguely around as if Ronan is his guest and not the other way around. 

Still, Ronan does take a seat, shuffling to sit down on the edge of the kingsized bed and its neatly made duvet. 

Adam walks the carpeted floor in front of him, going backwards and forwards at a calculated pace and taking his coat off in the process. “In approximately 45 minutes the room next to us is going to sport a fairly nasty group of people, being here next door is my only chance of collecting probatory registrations.” 

Ronan still regards him with full skepticism, “So I should believe that you, with that shiny CIA badge, couldn’t book a fucking room by yourself?” 

A little sideways smile tilts Adam’s mouth, tainted by an annoyance whose target is unclear, “Normally, sure. But we had another plan up to one hour ago. I wasn’t even supposed to be here, but I’m _not_ letting this fold.” 

“What the actual fuck,” Ronan grits out, passing one hand along his buzzed-cut scalp. This couldn’t seriously be his life now.

“My handler hacked into the hotel, we found the room of the targets, the choice was between one Ronan Lynch — interesting connection with the Lawyer Declan Lynch and little more — or a family of three in 834.” This time, the smile is a bit more mischievous, while Adam makes a point of looking him up and down. “I have standards.”

It would be incredibly flustering if it weren’t so surreal. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. This whole story. I mean this can’t be fucking legal.”

“Because it absolutely isn’t,” Adam candidly replies, without even batting an eye. He stops very purposefully in front of Ronan, looking down. For a couple of seconds, there is something unadulterated in his expression that speaks of _danger_. “I’m cutting my losses here, Mr. Lynch, and breaching some confidentiality on the good faith that you will at least _behave_ , in all this charade, without becoming a problem.” He bends forward and presses his hands against Ronan’s knees, smiling at the inadvertent flinching he must have felt. “Is this enough answers for your taste? Because I need to get signal from the _damn_ other room and I’m kind of on a clock, you know.”

“Okay, okay, what the fuck dude, do your thing!” 

Adam’s smile returns to the generally pleasant one, even while he smoothly dodges a reflexive kicking of Ronan’s legs when he squeezes down on them. “Brilliant,” he says, and then shuffles in the room to neatly kneel beside his suitcase and open it up. Half of it contains clothes, so ordered they could have been folded with a ruler; the other half looks like a crazy mixture of advanced electronics and even more obscure equipment. Among all this mess, Adam just picks up what looks like a precision torch, and disappears in the bathroom. 

After five minutes spent having an existential crisis about getting pulled into a stupid spy movie by one of the hottest dudes he has ever seen in his life, Ronan gets distracted by a hissed swearing, followed by an Adam that oozes frustration. 

“What, the fucking blueprints are wrong?” Ronan muses.

Adam castes him a very disdainful look, while turning around his open suitcase as if doing a mental inventory. “No, the fucking blueprints are absolutely right. Which is kind of a problem because my only chance of connection is through the ventilation system of the bathroom.”

“Don’t they teach you how to open those at 007 courses?” 

“Ah, ha, ha, hilarious,” Adam stresses on every syllable. “It’s too high to reach and too awkward to slide something two meters in without rattling. And we’re talking about suspicious people on the other end, Mr Lynch, rattling is _not_ an option.” 

Feeling more curious than he reasonably should be, Ronan gets up and eyes inside the bathroom. The vent grid is a white square at the very top of the high wall, placed too weirdly to put the desk chair of the room underneath it. 

“I could help you get up there, you know?” Ronan finds himself saying, conscious of his build even though Adam is not much shorter.

“Why, Mr Lynch, I’m touched,” Adam replies, but he looks like he’s considering the proposition. “The problem of how to get the bug all the way in there still stands, unfortunately.”

Ronan scratches his nape, with a scowl. He doesn’t even know why he’s trying to help, and Adam is so charged by this puzzle to be contagious. “Yeah, and your suitcase doesn’t have a toy car to send rolling down in there, does it?”

Adam tilts his head and watches him like a very appreciative hawk for some long seconds. “I’m really impressed,” he says at the end, with a playful smile and the eyes of a man with a plan. He charges through the room and picks up the hotel provided notebook and a pencil, pushing the latter into Ronan’s hands together with what looks like a tiny arched hacksaw from his suitcase. “Cut the wheels out of this. I’ll make up the framework. Welcome to Operation Dreamscape, Mr Lynch.”

Ronan stares at the supply with a mix of wonder and disbelief. “Are we...what...building a fucking toy car?”

“Oh, we absolutely are,” Adam confirms, already sitting down by his suitcase to fish out other supplies. “You can take the desk, and try to be precise. You don’t want to waste your brilliant idea, do you?”

It shouldn’t be so flattering to be appreciated by a vaguely disconcerting Special Agent with eyes on the mission, but it is. “Is this thing even gonna cut the pencil?” Ronan wonders at the arched hacksaw, smaller than the palm of his hand.

“My team modified the blade for me, it can cut way more than a pencil,” Adam replies, so matter-of-factly as if it’s trivial to have personalized equipment lying in your suitcase. He seems completely engrossed into bending what looks like copper wire to form a square network. 

The moment Ronan catches himself admiring the tendons protruding from the back of his hand is the moment he puts himself to work at the desk for good. 

Cutting four small disks out of the pencil is as easy as it sounds silly, but as soon as he’s done Adam snatches them one by one to fit the wire through the graphite core of it. He’s so focused Ronan doesn’t know if he’s seeing the creation of a work of art or the intimidation of some general supplies into making themselves useful. By the end of it, though, the framework is sporting four tiny wheels and when Adam pushes it on the desk it actually slides. 

“Time,” Adam demands, not even looking at Ronan while he cut off a piece of hard cardboard from the back of the notebooks and carefully glues it on top of the framework.

“It’s 9.53...Er...21.53?” Ronan replies, trying for military time. “Why don’t you just put the bug on the framework?”

“Because electronics and interference with metallic conductors are a thing, Mr Lynch. Don’t make me demote your evidently sharp mind and come help me in the bathroom. We’ve got five minutes, I need to allow for testing.” Adam directs, abundantly dismissing everything else around him while he glues the bug really carefully on the cardboard before straightening up from the desk.

Ronan, for what must be the twentieth time in the evening, just follows, staring a bit too much at the spy work in Adam’s hands. He contributed to its _ideation and creation_ , as unbelievable as it sounds.

“Okay, Mr Lynch, now it’s time for some acrobatics,” Adam hints, looking at him head to feet again while kicking away his leather shoes.

By the time Ronan has had a serious discussion with himself about the unconscious _hots_ the sentence caused him, Adam is already placing a naked foot at the top of Ronan’s jeans-clad thigh and hitching himself up with impressive athleticism. Then the situation is immediately worse, because Ronan needs to grasp at him to steady them both and Adam is solid and warm under his hands in a way that somehow he hadn’t predicted.

“Yes!” Adam gloats above him, after some long studious fiddling Ronan is left blind to. He looks down at him while Ronan looks up, and places his now empty hands by the side of Ronan’s neck, grasping. “You might have just saved the day, Mr Lynch.”

Ronan swallows against nothing, too aware for his own good of how handsome Adam looks towering above him and how he’s dangerously close to his crotch to the point that it’s difficult not to look at it.

“Are you gonna put me down, now?” Adam’s voice is more of a whisper, now, suggestive of too many things at once.

The only reason Ronan doesn’t scramble too badly to execute is to avoid killing them both between the bathroom furniture, even though Adam seems more graceful than a panther in his jumping and sliding around. For all the intense staring just two seconds before, he follows up by completely ignoring Ronan and going back to the suitcase, flipping around additional bits of electronics and possibly turning on the bug remotely. 

“B., can you test the bug? The serial is 8932401,” Adam rattles off, evidently speaking with his quartermaster or whoever the hell is on the other side of the line. “It’s on but it might need some tuning.”

Ronan stalks around the room nervously, trying not to look at Adam and at his sleek black hair falling barely grazing his shoulders. It’s a bit difficult not to, though, when he turns and somehow Adam is right behind him without Ronan getting even half a sense of it.

“Jesus,” he growls, averting his gaze. 

“Not quite, but I’ve had worst aliases,” Adam counters, with a wicked grin that suits his features way too perfectly. “My team is fixing up the equipment, I’ve got confirmation that the targets are in the room. Now it’s just a question of getting them to talk.”

A frown builds up on Ronan’s forehead, “Aren’t they in the room to fucking talk, though?”

“Yes, but as I was saying, it’s paranoid people we’re talking about. I’m sure the kid in 834 is spontaneously covering that side, but they need to feel like no one is listening, do you understand?” Adam’s brown eyes are way too intense even in the split seconds Ronan allows himself to look.

“I...don’t know, maybe? You mean we should just turn on the TV or something?” Ronan flounders.

Adam take one step further towards him, forcing Ronan to back off to avoid colliding. “Not quite, that’s artificial and not convincing. We could stage an epic fight, you do look incredibly good at swearing…” 

Ronan smiles reflexively, but there is something underlying in Adam’s tone that locks any reply in his throat. He looks back at him, and Adam takes another step towards him. Ronan feels the mattress at the back of his legs when he shuffles back again.

“Or you could strip, Mr Lynch, and we’ll see how loud I can _make you_.” 

Ronan is honestly too old to end up on the spot just by a blatant sexual proposition, and yet this whole evening is so surreal and Adam too instinctively unattainable to compute. So he almost chokes on his spit and coughs, while staring way too much for his desire to stay hidden.

Adam’s smile widens, and he’s hyperfocused again, but this time the hawk must have caught his prey. “Just what I was hoping,” he whispers, and grabs Ronan by his shirt to drag him into a kiss. 

By this point in his adult life, Ronan has been kissed plenty of times, but never by a special agent who ambushed him and let him cooperate with his crazy plans. Adam kisses with a charged energy that has less to do with the polished version of himself that Ronan saw in the hotel hall and more with the biting urgency of getting shit done that he’d shown inside the room. 

If there is something Ronan is good at it’s giving up his nerves and just barging into situations, so naturally he grasps the sides of Adam’s head and chases after his tongue. Adam presses up against his hands and kisses Ronan back until his lungs are burning, until he gives up and just separates their mouth. His reward is a slow smile from Adam, that licks his lips as if chasing Ronan’s taste and pushes him back with a hard shove to make him land on the mattress. 

“Get naked, Mr Lynch,” Adam orders, with a really pointed stare, and turns around to go back to the damn suitcase. 

Ronan swears under his breath and _does_ start to undress, because at this point in his evening there is no point in being subtle and contrary and Adam looks like the type of guy that will drop the idea at the first sign of unwillingness and smoothly move on to something else. What stops him in his track is the sight of Adam grasping his hair and _lifting it off_. 

“What the fuck?” Ronan startles, while Adam turns around — dusty blond hair neatly cut short, no glasses and blue eyes. If possible, is even more unfairly attractive than before.

“It’s called disguise, Mr Lynch. You can’t seriously think I would risk our paranoid neighbour catching sight of me,” Adam snickers, growing increasingly cheeky by the second. 

“Yeah, sure...shit…” with his shirt still in one hand, Ronan still finds himself seriously distracted. “Black really doesn’t suit you.”

Adam bats his eyes and then, for the first time in the evening, actually laughs. “Good thing it was just a wig, then.” He makes to come back towards the bed and tosses something on the duvet — condoms and lubes. Ronan never really got out of the mood, but regardless he’s squarely back in now. “Don’t stop on my account, Mr Lynch, by all means,” Adam adds, taking off the pullover from his white shirt for good measure. 

Ronan kicks his shoes away with another string of curses, and moves to take off his jeans. He’s really not a teenager, and yet they are starting to feel a bit tight at every incremental stare Adam reserves for him.

“B., I’m about to go off comms, does that thing work?” he asks, to the theoretical void. Ronan freezes, but Adam seems unperturbed in his multitasking and slide closer to him, grabbing his hands to make Ronan undo his trousers as well. “I know, it’s amazing, I did have some external help,” he adds, to a conversation Ronan cannot hear, flashing him a wink. “I might have, but the civilian has proven himself useful, this was his idea,” he undoes the cuffs of his shirt and neatly rolls the sleeves up. “Gotta go, now, I’ll debrief you and G. later and thank H. for the hacking!”

Ronan stares at him in absolute disbelief, even while he gets pressed back against the duvet and Adam takes a small bundles of cables way from his right ear and tosses them on the bedside table. If he hadn’t, Ronan must admit, he would never have spotted them right away, even knowing that Adam was communicating with someone. 

“We’re gonna get killed, aren’t we?” Ronan breaths out, staring up at Adam like an alien creature. Sometimes, depending on the trick of light, he might look disconcerting, with his high cheekbones and too-intense framing of his eyes — and yet, Ronan keeps finding him ridiculously attractive from every possible perspective.

“Have a little faith, Mr Lynch, I’m good at calculating my risks,” Adam purrs, sneaking out of his trousers. Then he bends down to kiss Ronan’s neck and the conversation is evidently over.

It’s like flipping a very insistent switch. 

Adam presses against him and touches all over, elegant hands sliding on Ronan’s skin with competence and mouth following around.

“Ah, fuck,” Ronan grinds out through his teeth, when Adam latches on his nipples after finding them hard with just a brushing of his fingers. He’s half expecting a quick and teasing kiss, but Adam persists until Ronan is squirming, back bending. Until he pushes Adam away bodily, panting hard.

“Nice,” Adam approves, licking his lips again. Without even looking down, he reaches to the hem of Ronan boxers and drags them away, tossing them out of the bed together with the other clothes. There is little to hide about how hard Ronan is, cock leaning heavily against his belly now that is out of the constriction of the underwear. “ _Very_ nice.”

Ronan groans and drags Adam down to kiss him again, abs jumping when Adam trails down his pubic hair to play with the root of his cock. He tries to take his shirt off, and that’s the only moment the roaming of his hands gets blocked. 

“Sorry, too much equipment, I need to keep this on,” Adam hisses, sucking at Ronan’s bottom lip in retaliation of the exasperated sound that escapes him. “I’ll make it up for you, trust me.”

Ronan kneads at Adam’s ass and just tilt his head further back to get that lips on his neck once again. “You’d better. It looks like a cheap kinky shit.”

Adam laughs again, close to his ear, and grasp at Ronan’s cock. “Oh, I’ll give you the kinky shit all right.”

After that, it’s a bit of a blur of sensations: Adam’s fingers playing with the slit of his cock, love bites in sensitive places that Ronan didn’t know he had before, Adam’s tongue swirling on the soft skin beside his knee while pushing his middle finger all the way inside. He touches back sometimes, but Adam is as dedicated to him as he has been to the setting up of the bug. One fingers becomes two, and then he’s rocking against three, half-turned on his side and coaxed into opening up by Adam’s impossible competence. He does manage to get his hand on Adam’s cock, at least, stroking in time with the incendiary path that Adam is tracing inside him.

“Ah...you should moan more for me. They need to hear you,” Adam says, twisting his fingers inside Ronan, wet and effortlessly. Then he pushes in suddenly, with a couple of deep motions.

Ronan’s body rocks and jumps, a moan building up, breaking, and then coming back to life higher.

“So that’s how it is? You like it rough?” Adam coos, and his free hand rises and slaps down on the top of Ronan’s left thigh. 

“Fuck!” Ronan spits out, hips canting to chase Adam’s fingers. “Yes!...Okay? Yes!” 

Adam laughs but there is no mockery in the sound, more a profound enjoyment of the whole situation. “Oh, that’s good…” he considers and then takes his fingers out of Ronan to flip him down on his stomach “...’cause that’s exactly how I’m gonna give it to you.”

The pillows are incredibly bright in their bleached out whiteness against Ronan’s face. Or maybe he’s too high on anticipation in that handful of seconds that Adam takes to put a condom up. 

“Hell, I didn’t notice the tattoo!” Adam pipes up, admired and completely out of breath at the same time. He runs both hands along the curves of the black ink and Ronan shivers, feeling his hole fluttering against the emptiness. 

“Get on with it for fuck’s sake!” He snaps, hips tilting up in a clear offer to Adam. What he gets in return is a hand pressing between his shoulders and another one grasping his left hip. If Adam is half as competent in fucking him as he is in pinning him down, Ronan is going to get _wrecked_. 

“I will, Mr Lynch, I am,” Adam breaths out, and aligns himself slowly, the tip of his cock sliding in first, and waits until Ronan actually breaths out before slamming all the way inside.

Predictably, and exactly has planned, Ronan moans deep enough to echo through all the room. Adam strokes his nape and kneads his fingers on his hips with a moan, and doesn’t really let Ronan catch a breath before fucking into it like he’s trying to make the bed slam against the wall in the process. It might be so, actually, but Ronan is feeling every incremental thrust, every adjusting more than the previous one, and it’s difficult to keep track. It’s also difficult to feel used, given how mindlessly Adam drops his forehead between Ronan’s shoulders and murmurs praises while squelching in an out of his body.

“No touching,” Adam grits out at some point, the point when Ronan’s cock feels like bursting and he was just about to rub one off in all its glory while the fabric of Adam’s shirt tickles his back.

When Adam grasp on his elbows and lifts him up with a jerk, using the leverage of his arm to push that last inch inside, Ronan find that it’s not needed. He screams, eyes watering, and rolls his hips in twitches, chasing Adam’s cock inside him, 

“Ahhh! Shhh...iiit...AH!”

“Ronan, Jesus Christ...just like this...come on, Ronan…”

He wants it to last, but his body is just too tuned in the rhythm and once Adam starts calling his name he doesn't seems to be able to stop. It does things, to him, after all the Mr. Lynch. 

“Ad...ah!...Adam…” 

He comes in jerks and waves, at the end, head lolling down and forehead barely brushing the pillow. 

Even Adam is moaning enough to be heard across the walls, but still manages told slow enough to let Ronan ride it out. When he comes in the crazy clenching of his insides, is with a shiver and a shout, grip giving out on Ronan’s arms. Adam plasters himself against Ronan’s back without qualms, without asking for permission. He just burns his orgasm down there, until the end and then some more. 

They take a bit, maybe too long, to breathe in and out without moaning. 

Adam slides out with more smoothness than he should be capable of, and caresses again along the tattoo. Then, unbelievably, he follows up with his mouth, running it on painted skin and perspiration.

“Round two?” Adam hints, after five minutes, while sliding incrementally closer to Ronan’s cheeks, kisses getting wetter by the minute.

“Fuck yes,” Ronan enthusiastically agrees, voice hoarse. If they need to be heard, they might as well make it memorable

  
  


* * *

  
  


The morning after, Ronan wakes up face down on the bed and considers immediately that he might never be able to turn around and stand up straight ever again.

He blinks through the faint light that filters through the curtains, an annoying ray landing way too close to his face on the pillows.

It takes him a while to figure out that he’s alone, and the other side of the bed is empty of Adam, even though they collapsed together after a crazy marathon sex that should not be feasible between two people that met up during a CIA investigation.

In his place on the pillow, though, there is a note written with a very precise calligraphy:

_“You were astonishing, Mr Lynch. I’ll find you again.  
-A.”_

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much for reading!
> 
> Your comments, kudos and general adorableness are making my days (especially because as every Pynchweek I constantly end up in a dire state of sleep deprivation).
> 
> As usual, I'm also available on [my Tumblr](http://seekthemist.tumblr.com), the ask box is always open and I'm a super chatty person :D


	5. Fireflies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After changing 300 ideas again, here we go with my submission for Day 6, with another AU approach to the prompt “Firefly”! My sleep-deprived state brings you the Medieval!Fae!AU that no one asked for but I hope you will appreciate nonetheless.
> 
> I'm unbetaed at this round, so be patient with typos and the like!
> 
> This is a T-rated fill, no particular warnings apply, just go and enjoy! :D

  
  


The brick house stands in its bright red among acres of flowers, sapiently planted to ensure blossom all year around, and just a slender beaten path marks the way towards the village. At eight years old, this is all Ronan has ever known, and almost all he can conceive to ever know. 

The boundaries of his world are traced by the thick forest that flourishes over the edge of the field. Not to be crossed, in the absolute words of Mum and Dad. Ronan, usually contrary by instinct to every direct command, doesn’t question himself why he doesn’t disagree with this one. It’s just how it is. 

He spends his days among the swarms of bees his family takes care of, collecting honey and tending to apiaries and flowers. Once a week, now that he’s old enough, he goes with his father to the village to sells and exchange their goods. 

It’s on the way back from one of these trips that he meets his firefly.

Dusk is setting over the countryside, tainting everything red in the late summer air. Few cicadas are still screaming their way through the day, by this time of the year, and the quiet of the surrounding path is almost restored. Ronan sits at the back of the cart, half filled just with their purchases after the market, and watches his feet dangle over the edge, while their horse drags them steadily forward. 

It’s barely dark enough to see the shining, but the bug that lands on the plank beside him is definitely a firefly. A bit of a ran-down one, moreover, as one of its transparent wings seems vaguely crooked sideways. 

It doesn’t even attempt to move away when Ronan bends down to look more intently in the dim light, and the flashing of its shiny bulb almost seems like a greeting.

“Hello to you to,” Ronan whispers in return, grinning and feeling mischievous in hiding the exchange to his father. 

He stares at it for the whole trip, and even manages to coax the bug to go on his hand, unprecedentedly in his experience. Then the cart clatters and swings on the more uneven ground close to the house, and is time for Ronan to take an executive decision. 

Dad wouldn’t approve, since fireflies basically compete with the bees for pollen, but the fireflies looks so fragile and it would surely die if left there on its own. Ronan can help it.

He keeps his palm flat and runs inside the house to find a hiding place for it before helping unloading their weekly supplies. Once he’s done, he lights up the butt of a candle and sets up a little nest, with wet leaves, the leftover core of an apple and some watered honey.

“Good night,” he says, at the end, just when his mother calls loudly for him to go to bed. “I’ll come again tomorrow with more stuff so you can get better!”

Indeed, Ronan keeps taking care of the firefly for the rest of the week, keeping it hidden above one of the beams at the corner of the porch. He brings it flowers and moisty stuff, like fruit and soggy pieces of fabric, and grows more dedicated at every day, because the little bug does seems to get better in his care.

When he goes to see it on the eighth day, the firefly is flashing its light steadily and brightly, moving around its human-made nest quite vivaciously. 

“Oh, you’re all good now, then?” Ronan asks.

The bug flashes and flies on his hand when Ronan reaches out, still full of this uncanny trust in its behaviour. 

“So, do you want to go home, now?” He adds, tilting his head down at it. It moves on its hand with a sort of uncertainty, light flickering. “It’s okay, I know this is not your home, I won’t keep you here.”

The fireflies flies up from his hand and hovers in front of Ronan’s face, beaming steadily.

“Yep, just go home. You can always come and visit! It has been nice to meet you” Ronan waves his hand, feeling weirdly proud of his achievement and bittersweet about this parting. 

The firefly spins around him, streaking light in its path in the air and gaining speed, and then disappears towards the field, a lonely flickr among the dark countryside. 

Ronan looks at it for a long time, even after it disappears towards the forest, and then goes back inside the house, where his brothers are laughing and arguing about something.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Even though Ronan doesn’t forget about the firefly — forever treasured among his childhood memories — he doesn’t think about it so often in the years that follow.

He’s definitely not thinking about it now, almost twelve years later, while he dashes around an increasingly thick patch of trees and the daylight fades. He managed to escape a trio of bandits relatively unharmed, but even though he thought he knew where he had been heading, in his fleeing, everything is starting to grow foreign and unknown. 

Ronan stops and looks around, back leaning against what seems like a sycamore tree. Catching his breath is already hard work, but he is seriously starting to worry about how the night is going to proceed for him.

The forest is weirdly still and yet a whisper runs through it — less organic than animals and wind through the leaves, more like Ronan is being observed and chased. 

Just like a shiver freezes the sweat down of his back, a firefly rises up from the darkness. It shines and dances closer and closer to Ronan, uncaring that it’s just early spring and there is no way the weather is hot enough for a firefly to be so happily lying around. 

In the weirdness of it all, Ronan stands petrified, barely containing a startle when the light shines bright, then brighter, then brightest, growing in size to the point it almost engulfes Ronan and everything around him.

Ronan covers his eyes with a forearm and still end up half-blinded. He rubs against his eyes, furiously, trying to regain a spot-free vision in this tense and uncertain moment in which everything around him screams of danger.

When he does, someone is standing in front of him, even though he heard no one approaching.

“What the hell?!” he snaps between gritted teeth, and goes to take a couple of steps back, only to find himself already cornered by the sycamore tree.

The man — or boy — in front of him is uncanningly beautiful and yet absolutely disconcerting. His skin is almost translucent, and Ronan knows it with weird clarity even in the dark, which leads him to realize that he’s not sure the man is not glowing from the inside. There is an undertone of greenness in his complexion, and the curls of his hair are a messy halo around the smooth features of his face.

“There is no need to be afraid, Ronan — not yet,” the man murmurs. The intent might have been to soothe him, but his raspy voice has an undertone of threat regardless. 

“How do you know my name?!” Ronan snarls, every ounce as aggressive as he is terrified.

“We’ve met before, are you saying you don’t remember?” the man’s shiny eyes stare at Ronan unblinking, even while he takes his step forward.

“I’ve never met you!”

“Not in this form, I must admit,” the tone is almost considering, as if he’s conceding Ronan a point. “I’m usually a firefly.”

“A firefly?!” Ronan hears himself repeat. “The only close encounter I had with a firefly was more than ten years ago and I sure as hell have never been in this godforsaken forest before!”

“Oh, so you do remember,” the man coos, evidently pleased and blatantly ignoring the rest of Ronan’s quite verbal freak out. “I’m a fae, Ronan, and you passed the borders to our realm.”

Ronan freezes, looking straight at him and not containing a shiver at all this time. Everyone knows fairies’ realms are not to be disturbed. Everyone knows you might never exit. “Shit...what are you going to do to me?”

The man — the fae — smiles with a sequence of sharp teeth, but he seems more entertained than genuinely mischievous, even though Ronan doesn’t feel so subtle in telling the difference. “Breathe, child. You have memory of me and I have memory of you. You took good care of me when I could have died...should I take care of you now, since you could die as well?”

The tone is light as if they are discussing something inconsequential, but Ronan doesn’t scream profanities just out of a not-so-misplaced sense of intimidation. “You...could?” he stutters. It’s difficult to speak with a fae, he knows _conceptually_ that everything can turn into a bargain but he doesn’t feel so cunning at the moment to play this game properly.

“You fed me your food and you gave me your kindness. You could have kept me with you at your leisure, and yet you let me go.” The fae continues, unperturbed. He reaches out and grabs Ronan’s chin between three strong fingers, nails as sharp as razors. They look each other in the eyes and Ronan feels like he’s being stripped down to his soul. “You would still do it, even though your soul is older now.”

Ronan can say nothing, lock in the weird spot between terror and a masochistic attraction for the fae’s high cheekbones and angular jawline. Maybe some of this shows directly on his face, or the fae can read it from his mind, because he licks his lips suggestively and smiles at Ronan.

“I have a deal, Ronan,” the fae pipes up again, as if Ronan is not choking on the very air is attempting to breathe. “You give me a kiss, and I’ll bring you out of here. A one time leeway, in recognition of the kindness of your heart.”

Ronan swallows heavily, unable to refrain from dropping his eyes to the fae’s lips. He is suddenly aware that he wants to, but is fundamentally incapable of understanding whose will he’s acting on. However, the compulsion reminds him more of what he felt towards the tailor's apprentice last year than of something external casted into his mind by force. 

He nods, still plastered against the tree, and the fae smiles with some very obvious delight. One hand presses on Ronan’s chest and the other goes to cradle his head, sliding along the softness of his nape.

The fae tilts his head and their lips meet, with a dry pressure that lasts for some long seconds. The fae’s skin is warm in a flickering way, just like the pin pricking sensation after having put your really cold hands in front of the fire. Ronan inhales helplessly with his nose, feeling himself squirming against the bark of the tree.

“Open your mouth,” the fae smoothly suggests, close enough that their lips brush together while he speaks and that his glittering blue eyes are vaguely out of focus because of the proximity.

Closing his eyes again, Ronan opens his mouth.

The disconcerting warm pours inside him with the first slide of the fae’s tongue and it doesn’t stop. If anything, it intensifies, building up as a spiral of smoke reaching the sky the more they cross their tongues together. 

The fae explores Ronan’s mouth and suckles on his tongue, as if to taste him, and Ronan lets him, reciprocating. It goes on for more than it should be sensible, until Ronan is wheezing wetly between their mouth and then some minutes more. 

His head is spinning by the time the fae withdraws, stroking almost reverentially at Ronan’s face. He stares at him with the same piercing gaze and Ronan can feel the focus of his mind slipping, eyes losing sharpness of vision.

“Some humans have called me Adam, through the centuries,” the fae murmurs, lips brushing repeatedly on Ronan’s face. “Remember my name, for when we meet again. You’ll need to be careful on who tastes the honey, then, Ronan.” 

Ronan wants to ask what he means, when are they going to meet again, what he’s happening to him. If the fae — Adam — is planning to try and steal him. 

He can’t, though. His vision blackens and he loses grip on his consciousness, fainting in Adam’s arms. 

When he wakes up again, he’s in his bed and the linens are covered in flowers. Most of the evening is fuzzy in his head, but he still remembers Adam, with unbelievable — maybe even shameful — details.

Ronan sits up on the bed and look down on his hand. A single core of a green apple lies there, not even brownish as if bitten just one second ago. He smiles.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much for reading!
> 
> I'm losing it over your comments, honestly, so keep them coming. I'm super endeared and incredibly flattered by how well received this collection has been so far.
> 
> Remember that I'm always reachable on [my Tumblr](http://seekthemist.tumblr.com), and I love you all <3


	6. Accidental baby acquisition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here we come with Pynchweek Day7, a.k.a. “I can’t believe I almost survived this year as well” XD
> 
> I wrote this shamelessly fluffy thing while on a train, and it’s unbetaed so have mercy on my typos.
> 
> This is a very very T-rated ficlet, just check your blood sugar levels :DDD

  
  


A disembodied and emotionless registered female voice rattles off the loudspeakers of the plane, confirming the route and giving housekeeping announcements while the passengers take their seats.

Ronan looks out of the tiny window and watches airport stuff busying away on the asphalt. He's not such a big fan of flying but there is no other way to go and visit Matthew to make sure he's not getting himself killed in São Paulo, Brazil, during his very random three months stay.

He's still thinking about the neighbourhood of Matthew's accommodation — sensible at the first, second and tenth glance, but you might never know — when something tiny scrambled up the seat next to him.

"Hiiii!" The toddler drags out, immediately after catching his sideways glance. Dressed in a purple salopette and a light green cotton shirt, there is no way of telling if they are a boy or a girl, but they still stare at Ronan with a too-marked fascination. They can't be more than two years old.

"Hey, maggot. Are you here on your own?" Ronan muses, winning a broad smile with short teeth.

"Yes!" The toddler squeaks.

"No, you're not, Rachel" a voice comes from above them before Ronan can express his skepticism about a two years old alone on a plane.

Rachel giggles, all mischief, and looks up in the aisle, where a tall, slender man is struggling to put his cabin luggage and baby bag up in cabin lock. He's pleasantly tanned by the Brazilian sun and his dusty blonde hair match compellingly with his complexion. There is something absolutely drained in face, as if he's running low even on the reserve gas, and yet his expression is patient and indulgent when he looks down at his kid.

Trust Ronan's luck to deliver him an unreachable hot dad for a several hours flight.

"Sorry, she just likes being silly," the man apologises, kind and courteous, while sitting down beside the kid.

"No problem," Ronan replies, ready to go back looking outside where the plane is preparing for departure. Watching Hot Dad fussing over his daughter is the last thing he needs, surely.

Unfortunately, said daughter seems to have a different idea.

"Whassyuv name?" She munches over words in a rush to deliver them.

It does take Ronan a few seconds to translate it, "What, my name?" He frowns but Rachel nods at him full of expectations. He sighs, "I'm Ronan."

"Raschel!" The kid counters, and slams a tiny chubby hand forward, as if requesting a handshake.

Ronan raises both eyebrows, because no toddler he has ever met tried anything like this, but then he snorts and grabs the tiny hand between three fingers to give it a shake. It's incredibly soft and too smooth not to be at least a bit endearing. "Nice to meet you, Rachel," he muses, looking up.

The men, seated and buckled on the aisle seat, is shaking his head and running two fingers along the side of his nose. "Sorry, she's always like that. Her father is...a bit posh, let's say. She imitates. I'm Adam, by the way."

Ronan bats his eyes for a fraction of a second. Considering that Adam presents himself as unmistakably masculine and yet is around with a kid without being posh, his luck must have delivered him the Hot Gay Dad to rule them all, and put him just out of decency reach. Causality is really a bitch.

"It's fine. Funny but fine," Ronan admits with a half smile, and gets aware that Rachel is still playing with his hand when she reaches the leather bands on his wrist.

“Rachel, let’s leave Ronan a bit of space, okay?” Adam says, persuading the little girl to give up the grip and helping her to buckle up the seatbelt for departure. He moves competently and precisely, expression always approachable, and finishes up the task by tickling Rachel’s belly. Ronan really _didn’t_ need to see this.

When Adam gives Rachel a squared book full of figures — very nicely done in quality, for a kid, but Rachel seems to treat it surprisingly well — Ronan fishes out his iPod and settles in with headphones on. This should be the end of his kid — and Hot Gay Dad — interaction for the day. 

As it turns out, he is very wrong.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Thirty minutes into the flight, a small hand tugs at his sleeve until Ronan turns around and takes his earphones off.

“What, maggot?” Ronan asked, finding himself once again the focus of Rachel’s wide, hazel eyes.

“Roual, read?” she proposes, mauling Ronan’s name in the process. She dexterously unbuckles herself and turns around on the seat to hand Ronan the book. 

“Oh God,” Adam murmurs from beside her. “Rachel, what did Mum and Dad tell you about playing with strangers?”

So now it’s Mum and Dad, but it’s weird to think of Adam referring himself as Mum. More confusing by the minute, but Ronan can’t do much more than silently mulling on it.

Rachel bats his eyes, looking at Adam and then back at Ronan. “Read, please?” she amends, as if it’s just a question of good manners. 

Adam drags a hand on his face and Ronan snickers before the scolding can be amended. “Okay then, let’s see what you’ve got.”

“You really don’t have to…” Adam starts to say, even while Rachel squeals in delight and shuffles on the seat to get closer to him.

“Nah, it’s fine, it’s not like I’ve got anything else to do,” Ronan shrugs it out and picks up the book. 

Adam sighs and unbuckles himself as well, picking up Rachel and settling her on his legs while he sits down next to Ronan, evidently determined not to leave his kid in someone else’s care. Ronand does appreciate not being treated as an impromptu babysitter, even though Rachel is strangely compelling in her whims. “I really don’t know how she’s so hyper,” Adam admits, defeated, circling Rachel’s tiny body with one arm while she settles with her back against his chest, still turned towards Ronan. 

“Well, she’s a kid.”

“I know, I know, but we’ve been travelling since 6 o’clock this morning, she had her food before check in, she should be destroyed!” Adam protests, even while they open the book and Rachel quietly humming to herself while she shuffle around the pages and Ronan holds the book.

Ronan casts a careful look to Adam, skin tensed and eyes a bit glossy, circle with a couple of exhausted bags. _Still stunning_ , Ronan’s treacherous mind provides unprompted. “I’m think you’re feeling this more than her.”

Adam leans more heavily against the seat, with a self-conscious smile. “Damn, I am. But her parents need to stay in Brazil for more than they planned to, so I’m bringing the little hell spawn back home.”

“Uncle Adam, we going granny?” Rachel pipes up, looking at him with all the trust and adoration of the world, uncaring about the hell spawn just as she was to Ronan’s maggot. 

“Yes, sugar, I’m bringing you back to your grannies.” Adam confirms, more softly in addressing the toddler directly and with a vague drawl in his words that almost sounds Virginian to Ronan’s ears. “If we can survive this trip, I mean,” he adds, smiling at Ronan sideways.

Uncle Adam. So the kid is not his, and Hot Gay Dad is thus Hot Relative With Unknown Sexuality. Thank God for small mercies. 

“Sure we can,” Ronan encourages, feeling a bit less on the spot in his helpless, intimate lusting. “Come on, brat, let’s see what you’ve got.” 

They read it together, between the three of them, with the same infallible kid logic for which their favourite book is always entertaining. All things considered, Ronan must admit, it is a fairly entertaining book, the tale of a king sleeping under a mountain and the magic adventures of this group of mismatched kids trying to find him and wake him. It’s wonderfully illustrated and full of silly word jokes that make Rachel giggle her heart out even though she must already know them by heart, by now.

“Okay, this is kind of funny, you know?” Ronan confesses to Adam, at some point. “It might work also as a grownup book, with a bit of tweaking around.” 

Adam laughs, kissing the crown of Rachel’s head and her thin dark hair. “I’ll make sure to tell it to Gansey. The author. Incidentally Rachel’s father.”

“Wow, maggot, I didn’t know you had conflict of interest!” Ronan tells to Rachel, that probably doesn’t understand the words but catches the playful tone and chirps out an excited laugh.

After that, Adam conscientiously brings Rachel to the bathroom, to make sure that she uses it and that her nappy is changed before disasters. Ronan eyes them between the edge of the seats, walking hand in hand in small steps, a bit wobbling from the toddler’s part. Rachel wins some cooing and elicits some smiles but doesn’t climb on anyone else.

When they’re back, Adam is evidently hoping to regain control of the situation and putting things in order for the rest of the travel, but Rachel jumps back in the middle seat and launches herself towards Ronan again, picking up the book from where it rested on Adam’s seat. 

“Roual, read more?” She bats her really compelling doe eyes to him, seemingly unaware that the only reaction a guy of Ronan’s build and with Ronan’s attitude usually elicit is _carefulness_. “Please?” she adds, manners still remembered with some delay in favour of the excitement. 

“Jesus Christ…” Adam defaults on the seat and picks Rachel up again.

“We could do,” Ronan suggests. Maybe because reading the books seems to compel Adam to make some adult chats with Ronan. Maybe because Adam is so evidently exhausted Ronan feels the need to do something.

“You’re spoiling her,” Adam points out, but still turn to Rachel. “Ronan is being very kind and playing with you but we read it this once and then we’re done. Do we have a deal?”

Rachel looks back, hearing the _serious business_ tone that Adam is using for the ground rules. “Okay,” she nods, solemnly, but she’s still a bit bossy in pushing the books back in Ronan’s hand.

They settle back and this time Ronan, knowing the story, lets himself chat a bit over it — adding tales of the farm he grew up in, some childhood shenanigans with his brothers and some of the crazy story Niall used to tell the three of them when they were little. 

Adam laughs together with Rachel, seemingly endeared. “You’re a very good storyteller,” he says.

So Ronan goes on, because if being a good storyteller is what makes Adam smile at him that way it’s easier to keep on talking than to look at him in the eyes.

He notices when Rachel falls asleep because she lulls back and forth a bit and then she curls onto Adam’s chest. He hadn’t noticed that Adam fell asleep — before her, even — but he definitely does now because he slides a bit more on the seat and tilts sideways, resting his head on Ronan’s shoulder.

Ronan stares at him up close, startled by the tension and by the feel of _almost tenderness sneaking_ around his ribs. There is no way in hell he would move him, or wake him, so Ronan spends the rest of the flight as Adam’s pillow, while Rachel stays nested in the embrace of Adam’s arms.

It’s weirdly peaceful.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Rushing off to take his taxi, Rachel peaking up behind his shoulders where she’s buckled up in his hiking carrier, Adam grabs Ronan’s arm, suddenly. A pen in his hand, he scribbles on the back of Ronan’s hand. 

With a tilted handwriting undoubtedly influenced by Ronan’s skin, he has written _Adam Parrish_ , and what looks like a phone number.

“You should call me,” Adam says, easily but with a charged smile full of suggestions. “Bye, Ronan!”

He skips off, then, Rachel waving her tiny hand at him in turn. “Byeee!”

Ronan watches them go, bewildered and blinking stupidly but still waving his hand. This was definitely the weirdest, most successful flight he has ever taken in his life.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much for reading!
> 
> Of course the real identity of Rachel's parents is kind of an easy guess, I suppose!
> 
> Let me know what you think about all of these, kudos, comments and messages on [my Tumblr](http://seekthemist.tumblr.com), the ask box is always open :D


End file.
